Wednesday, May 31, 2017

I was just heading out the door for some much-needed afternoon exercise in the Seattle sunshine, when I noticed that Mystery Fanfare has posted the 2017 Shamus Award nominees. The Private Eye Writers of America will announce the winners during this coming fall’s Bouchercon in Toronto, Ontario.

Best Private Eye Novel:•Where It Hurts, by Reed Farrel Coleman (Putnam)•The Graveyard of the Hesperides, by Lindsey Davis (Minotaur)•Fields Where They Lay, by Timothy Hallinan (Soho Crime)•With 6 You Get Wally, by Al Lamanda (Gale Cengage)•The Stardom Affair, by Robert S. Levinson (Five Star)

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

(Editor’s note: This review is submitted in association with Todd Mason’s Tuesday series of blog posts about “overlooked films and/or other A/V.” You’ll find more of this week’s picks here.)

A brief, weird trailer for “L.A. 2017.”

Pretty much everyone nowadays is quite familiar with movie director-producer Steven
Spielberg. But when he initially embarked on a Hollywood career during Richard Nixon’s scandalized presidency—years before he made Jaws (1975) or Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) or Schindler’s List (1993)—the Ohio-born Spielberg worked in television, a talented individual with scant name familiarity. He directed episodes of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, Marcus Welby, M.D., The Psychiatrist, Columbo, and Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law, in addition to a 1971 ABC-TV thriller film, Duel, that found McCloud’s Dennis Weaver being menaced by an aged oil tanker truck on a desolate stretch of California highway.

Duel, however, was Spielberg’s second feature-length small-screen production. The first was a 90-minute episode of The Name of the Game, a 1968-1971 NBC mystery/adventure “wheel series” that focused on reporters and others employed by a Los
Angeles-based magazine enterprise called Howard Publications, the urbane head of which was Glenn Howard, played by Gene Barry. The third-season installment of that series entrusted to Spielberg’s direction was titled “L.A. 2017.” It was a cautionary environmental-disaster tale, set in the not-too-distant future—2017, in fact, our present time—and scripted by Philip Wylie (1902-1971), a rather controversial author of science-fiction and mystery stories, who may be best remembered today for his novels When Worlds Collide (1933) and The Disappearance (1951). While The Name of the Game was famous for being “the most expensive television program in history” (up to that point), with a per-episode budget of $400,000, Spielberg is said to have shot “L.A. 2017” for a comparatively economical $375,000.

“L.A. 2017” (which you can watch here, in six parts) was originally broadcast on January 15, 1971. It begins on a sunny California afternoon, with publisher Howard driving back to the City of Angels from the Sierra Pines Conference on Ecology, while at the same time dictating a memo about that gathering into a cassette tape recorder, the transcription of which is to be delivered to the president of the United States. Howard contends in the course of his spoken observations that the world’s natural resources are at a decisive tipping point, and that unless concerted political and economic leadership on environmental protections is exercised soon, “this may very well be the beginning of the end for Earth as we know it.” It may also mark the end of Howard, for as he wheels his sedan down a twisting mountain road, he grows sleepy and eventually loses consciousness, his car careening off the pavement.

When Howard next awakens, it’s to the sight of a pair of men in air masks knocking on his window. Outside, things appear gloomy and unwelcoming, and his two rescuers immediately fit him with an oxygen unit of his own. He’s carried to an emergency van and taken into a complex of industrial tunnels that turn out to be at the edge of what remains of Los Angeles. Doctors there determine that his health is fine. Yet he has somehow been transported (via a time warp, perhaps?) 46 years into the future! “Impossible!” Howard scoffs, as he learns more about the realm in which he’s risen—a place bedeviled by a toxic atmosphere, where what remains of the population has retreated into subterranean bunkers (L.A. has been underground ever since 1989). In this deranged new world, psychiatrists serve as the police, milk is a rare and prized libation, piped-in sounds are used to control human moods and behavior, wildlife has virtually vanished, telephones never work properly, prostitution has become a quotidian service, and for unexplained reasons, math jokes are a popular form of entertainment. Oh, and Big Business has finally succeeded in taking over the United States: it’s now “a shareholder’s democracy,” with its capital in a well-buried Detroit, Michigan.

The folks who found Howard initially suspect he’s some sort of spy, who’s infiltrated Los Angeles under the bizarre pretext of being a man
from the past. Once finally convinced of his identity, however, they apprise Howard of what has befallen the globe since his car crash in 1971. According to Dane Bigelow, the U.S. vice president in charge of Los Angeles, the troubles began with enormous growths of yellow-gray algae in the Indian Ocean, “and when the stuff died, the wind carried the stench to the land. The stench, of course, was poisonous.” That algae eventually proliferated worldwide, and so did the toxins. Expensive efforts to curb this pending disaster only added “more deadly compounds to the biosphere,” slowly depleting the planet’s oxygen supply. Famines and disease epidemics struck, and the weather turned lethal, killing millions of residents before they could adapt to a belowground existence. But, Bigelow says of this new subterranean life, “Some people think it’s even better than the old one.”

Managers of this new “USA Inc.” also have big plans in mind for Glenn Howard. They want him to revive Howard Publications and put it to work molding public values, convincing the country’s perhaps one million surviving citizens to accept their privations and the order imposed upon them by the hyper-controlling state.

(Above, left) The 1971 Popular Library edition of Philip Wylie’s Los Angeles: A.D. 2017. (Right) Open Road Media’s e-book version of that same environmental-disaster novel.

“L.A. 2017” is rife with familiar faces from 1960s and ’70s TV programs. For instance, Barry Sullivan (who guest-starred in such shows as The Man from U.N.C.L.E., It Takes a Thief, Mannix, Cool Million, Harry O, McMillan & Wife, The Streets of San Francisco, etc.; and who’d previously appeared in two other Name of the Game installments) portrays VP Bigelow, while Severn
Darden (Honey West, P.J., Banyon, Barbary Coast, Starsky and Hutch) shows up here as a particularly oleaginous psychiatrist-cop named Cameron. The then 30-year-old Sharon Farrell, who’d appeared with James Garner in the 1969 gumshoe flick Marlowe, and would later also turn heads in Peter Graves’ 1974 TV pilot, The
Underground Man, features here as Sandrelle, Bigelow’s secretary and a potential love interest for the time-displaced Glenn Howard.

Despite Bigelow’s assertion that the bunker-dwelling world of 2017 is a great place to live, it doesn’t take the inquisitive Howard long—thanks to assistance from the alluring but unblinkered Sandrelle—to discover the nightmare side of things. Births are tightly controlled to avoid “defective” babies, and sterilizations are common. Privacy is unknown, with video surveillance monitors ubiquitous. Assigned housing is overcrowded and mostly atrocious, with “seepage from above.” And residents who aren’t fully pulling their weight, or who are unwanted for other reasons, face the possibility of being dispatched to dangerous construction sites aboveground, or being otherwise exterminated. It’s no surprise in such a society that an underground movement (“underground” being used here in the sense of “subversive”) has burgeoned in L.A., or that the principled Mr. Howard hopes to make contact with it. As things develop, however, our hero puts those dissidents at risk by trying to join their cause.

In his own examination
of this 1971 episode, North Carolina film authority John Kenneth Muir proclaims that its “finest and most telling moment arises in the last act.

Glenn visits Vice President Bigelow and upbraids him for maintaining and nourishing a “totalitarian state.”

At first, Bigelow responds that “survival justifies anything” in 2017, but then he changes his tack.

He turns Glenn’s self-righteousness around on the man from the 20th century. If Glenn hates this “future” so much, why didn’t he do something about the environment when he had money, fame and power, back in 1971? Who is he to judge the future if he didn’t take responsibility for building it in the first place?

This is a really clever narrative angle, because it asks the audience, rather bluntly, to take just such responsibility for our shared
tomorrows. Why aren’t we complaining more loudly that some people—in the thrall of Big Business—want to gut rules and regulations that keep our water clean, our food safe, and our air breathable?

Spielberg made this dystopian drama at a time when dangers facing America’s natural resources were very much on the minds of its citizens. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had just been established in 1970 to help clean up the nation’s increasingly polluted air, ground, and water, and it wasn’t unknown for TV programs—not just The Name of the Game, but also such fare as the Emmy-nominated 1970 pilot film for The Senator, Hal Holbrook’s short-lived segment of The Bold Ones—to address or at least allude to the ecological damage wrought by industrial production.

Having his thought-provoking and not incidentally frightening yarn adapted as an episode of NBC’s high-profile Name of the Game might have pleased its author, Philip Wylie. But according to Lyman Tower Sargent’s 1979 reference work, British and American Utopian Literature, 1516-1975, that wasn’t the case. “Despite Wylie’s protests,” Sargent
explains, “his script was drastically revised, with many of his important ideas excised and some of the scenes cut as too ‘raw’ and shocking for
audiences in their living rooms. Wylie was furious: he had hoped to warn millions of viewers of the horrible consequences of pollution of the ecosphere, but the director had produced merely a cheap thriller.” The author’s response was to use “the television play as the basis for a paperback novel.” Sargent recounts that in October 1970, Wylie “turned out a ninety-thousand word novel that, except for the general outline of the plot, bears little resemblance to the televised version.”

That book, slightly retitled Los Angeles: A.D. 2017, is now easily available in an electronic version from Open Road Media, but can also still be acquired (more expensively and difficultly) in its original 1971 Popular Library paperback edition. As the late Randy Johnson observed in a review a couple of years back, Wylie’s novel begins with several chapters devoted to the ecology conference Glenn Howard was just leaving when he had his roadway accident (though in the book, he simply falls asleep at a shaded rest area). “Ostensibly a meeting to discuss the effects of pollution and global warming on the environment, Howard had come to realize it was really just industry’s attempt to soft-peddle the scientists and plan their opposition to the environmental movement,” Johnson relates. There’s no Dane Bigelow to be found anywhere in this yarn, and no seductive Sandrelle, either, though in the latter’s place is inserted Leandra Smith, a lithe blonde secretary in the employ of L.A. Mayor Robert Baker, who initially greets Howard in “an almost see-through costume” and goes on to become his “erotic companion.” What the novel does contain, however, is explicit torture and an emphasis on the evils of corporate America, plus more than a modicum of sex. As Johnson explained, “sex is wide open [in 2017 L.A.], with anybody and everybody from kindergarten age. It’s actually taught and encouraged. This would be [one] of those themes departing from the television episode ... [It] definitely wouldn’t have been allowed on 1971 television.”

There’s much about Wylie’s novel that remains interesting, particularly his reflections on the consequences of breaking down sexual
mores. But he goes on and on about that subject, to a tedious length, as he sends Howard into bedroom romps guaranteed to leave any man insensate to
restrictions on his other liberties. Also fascinating is the author’s portrayal of a troubled utopia, where it’s not always easy to judge whether the costs of change are greater than its benefits. And while Los Angeles: A.D. 2017 seems dated and preachy in some respects, its theme of impending ecological disaster is as current in the willfully ignorant age of Trump as it was 46 years ago.

I can certainly sympathize with Philip Wylie’s complaint that Steven Spielberg had turned his complex, message-driven tale into a “cheap thriller.” Yet after watching
the artfully shot “L.A. 2017” and then reading Los Angeles: A.D. 2017, I submit that simplifying the plot and emphasizing its dramatic aspects, as The Name of the Game did, resulted in Wylie’s subject matter being far more approachable. Spielberg has said that making “L.A. 2017” “opened a lot of doors for me.” My guess is it also helped open a lot of people’s eyes, in the early 1970s, to the escalating risks facing the world’s fragile environment. Perhaps we need similar calls to action from the entertainment industry in this real 2017 to make Americans understand the enormity of the threat now posed by climate change.

Monday, May 29, 2017

Epix has released the first trailer for Get Shorty, its 10-episode original series that is a reimagining of Elmore Leonard’s 1990 bestselling thriller comedy novel (previously adapted into the 1995 feature film starring John Travolta, Danny DeVito, Gene Hackman and Rene Russo). Get Shorty follows Miles Daly (Chris O’Dowd), a hit man from Nevada who tries to become a movie producer in Hollywood where he meets Rick Moreweather (Ray Romano), a washed-up producer of low-quality films who is desperately hanging on to the rungs of Hollywood relevancy and begrudgingly becomes Miles’ partner and guide through the maze of show business.

Here’s an occasion I surely would have forgotten, had it not been for this note on the Web site Television Obscurities:

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Coronet Blue. The short-lived CBS drama premiered on May 29th, 1967—nearly two years after it went into production. Frank Converse starred as an amnesiac searching for his identity. The only thing he can remember is the phrase “coronet blue,” but he doesn’t know what it means. Taking the name Michael Alden, the man embarks on a journey filled with danger and intrigue.

You can learn much more about this show by clicking here. The opening title sequence from Coronet Blue can be enjoyed here.

By the way, actor Frank Converse—who would go on from Coronet Blue to co-star with Jack Warden in N.Y.P.D. (1967-1969) and then with Claude Akins in the 1974-1976 trucker drama Movin’ On—just celebrated his 79th birthday on May 22.

Today marks the 123rd anniversary of author Dashiell Hammett’s birth in Saint Mary’s County, Maryland. (He died back in 1961.) So it’s a perfect time to remind everyone that, as I reported previously, blogger Evan Lewis is posting all 18 chapters—one per day—of the 1946 comic-book adaptation of Hammett’s only Sam Spade private-eye novel, The Maltese Falcon. The opening section and a bit about Lewis’ history with this magazine can be found here; Chapter 2 is here.

Friday, May 26, 2017

During a ceremony held last evening in Toronto, Ontario, the Crime Writers of Canada announced the winners of its 2017 Arthur Ellis Awards for Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing.

Best Novel:The Fortunate Brother, by Donna Morrissey (Viking Canada)

Also nominated: City of the Lost, by Kelley Armstrong (Penguin Random House of Canada): After James, by Michael Helm (McClelland & Stewart); Dead Ground in Between, by Maureen Jennings
(McClelland & Stewart); and Wishful Seeing, by Janet Kellough (Dundurn Press)

Also nominated: Trial by Fire, by Nora McClintock (Orca); The Girl in a Coma, by John Moss (The Poisoned Pencil/Poisoned Pen Press); Shooter, by Caroline Pignat (Tundra); and Another Me, by Eva Wiseman (Tundra)

Also nominated: Life Sentence: Stories from Four Decades of Court Reporting — or, How I Fell Out of Love with the Canadian Justice System, by Christie Blatchford (Doubleday Canada); The Ballad of Danny Wolfe: Life of a Modern Outlaw, by Joe Friesen (Signal/McClelland & Stewart); Black River Road: An Unthinkable Crime, an Unlikely Suspect, and the Question of Character, by Debra Komar (Goose Lane); and Shadow of Doubt: The Trial of Dennis Oland, by Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon (Goose Lane)

Unhanged Arthur for Best Unpublished First Crime Novel:The Golkonda Project, by S.J. Jennings

Also nominated: An Absence of Empathy, by Mary Fernando; Concrete Becomes Her, by Charlotte Morganti; Celtic Knot, by Ann Shortell; and The Last Dragon, by Mark Thomas

Thursday, May 25, 2017

Someday I really must contrive to be in England in May—if only to attend CrimeFest,
which is held during that month every year in Bristol, a historic port city in the nation’s southwest. Created in the wake of a one-off but very successful, 2006 visit to Bristol by the American Left Coast Crime convention, and organized under the auspices of Adrian Muller and Myles Allfrey, CrimeFest has grown into what I understand is a well-attended, multi-day event
with an international flavor, rife with recognizable crime, mystery, and thriller novelists, but refreshingly short of the cliquish camaraderie familiar from some other such literary gatherings. British chemist-turned-writer Ali Karim, who has been covering CrimeFest for The Rap Sheet ever since 2008, once remarked on this page that “It’s great to come out to Southwest England each year, meet up with friends and colleagues, and relax in a comfortable and familiar environment—while also celebrating and learning more about the crime and thriller fiction genre.”

Judging from the myriad photographs and e-mail notes Ali sent my way, the 2017 conference—held from May 18 to 21—was just as convivial, boisterous, and occasionally unpredictable as expected. It offered ample worthwhile panel discussions and reasons to laugh, plus two different awards ceremonies (one during which several CrimeFest prizes were dispensed, the other to declare the longlists of contestants for the British Crime Writers’ Association’s 2017 Dagger awards). In addition, there were opportunities for authors—so often cooped up by themselves in dusty offices—to collect in quiet corners of the convention venue (the Bristol Marriott Royal Hotel in College Green) and commiserate about troublesome publishers, missed deadlines, and what new books they’ve not yet found time to enjoy.

My hunch is that most Rap Sheet followers were as unuccessful as I was at attending last week’s CrimeFest. So I've gathered into this post more than a dozen photos, which should provide at least a general idea of what the four days of festivities offered. (Unless otherwise noted, these shots are were all taken by Ali Karim.)

A group of ruffians loitering with intent, outside the Bristol Marriott Royal Hotel: New Zealand blogger Craig Sisterson, together with novelists Quentin Bates, Lilja Sigurðardóttir and Michael J. Malone, and critic-author Barry Forshaw on the far right.

German author Volker Kutscher signs copies of The Silent Death, his second novel set in 1930s Berlin and starring maverick detective Gereon Rath (following Babylon Berlin).

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Evan Lewis, an award-winning short-story writer based in Portland, Oregon, has periodically published unusual crime-fiction discoveries in his
blog, Davy Crockett’s Almanack of Mystery, Adventure, and the Wild West. For instance, in 2014 he brought us a “nine-day extravaganza celebrating slick-tongued reporter Daffy Dill” of the fictional New York Chronicle.” And back in 2011, Lewis presented “A Man Couldn’t Breathe,” a forgotten yarn penned by David Goodis (under the pseudonym David Crewe) and published originally in the April 6, 1935, issue of Detective Fiction Weekly.

Now, Lewis has scheduled the posting—beginning this coming Friday, May 26—of a 1946 comic-book version of Dashiell Hammett’s only Sam Spade private-eye novel, The Maltese Falcon (1930). The full-color, 47-page magazine was illustrated by Rodlow Willard, a University of California-educated art director, editor, and “gag cartoonist” who once worked for the David McKay Comics Group, publisher of this Falcon adaptation. Although The Booklist Reader contends that the ’46 comic “didn’t leave much of an impression on those who have seen it, with artwork described as ‘wooden’ and ‘underwhelming,’” it makes clear that David McKay’s Maltese Falcon is “incredibly rare and fairly valuable.” Click here to enjoy a scan of the cover.

With one more day to go before rolling out the Falcon comic, Lewis promises that tomorrow he’ll write in his blog
about “the sequel to The Maltese Falcon.” I presume he’s referring to a January 10, 1948, episode of the radio drama series Suspense titled “The Khandi Tooth Caper,” in which actor Howard Duff—who starred in radio’s The Adventures of Sam Spade, Detective—again portrays Hammett’s case-hardened San Francisco gumshoe. As The Thrilling Detective Web Site explains, that 60-minute show was “a direct sequel to The Maltese Falcon, with Spade once again meeting [Casper] Gutman, [Joel] Cairo, and another ‘gunsel.’ It explains what happened to the real Falcon, alludes to Brigid O’Shaugnessy’s fate, and sets Spade and the bad guys at odds as they again contend in the search for another quest object, the fabled Khandi Tooth.” Stay tuned.

FOLLOW-UP: Sure enough, on Thursday morning Evan Lewis posted a sound file containing 1948’s “The Khandi Tooth Caper” (or “The Kandy Tooth Caper,” as he has chosen to title it). You can listen to that 60-minute program by clicking here.

I think what appealed to me most about Roger was his stately bearing. He was a gentleman in an age of very few gentlemen. Tailored suits, the finest cuff-links, impeccable hair … he always dressed for the occasion. Sometimes that occasion was yachting on the Riviera, other times hosting a race in London. If one was to look up the word debonair in the Webster’s dictionary, “Sir Roger Moore” should be the definition. It was like a real baron, no—a prince—took time off from his royal duties to try acting for a lark, to have the pleasure of entertaining the masses. And what pleasure he gave us!

Finally, author Lee Goldberg—who, in his younger days, talked several times with Roger Moore on the set of A View to a Kill for Starlog Magazine (“He was such a nice man, so funny and self-effacing … with an amazing memory for names”)—posted a link from his Facebook page to the published results of their exchanges.

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

“With the heaviest of hearts, we must share the awful news that our father, Sir Roger Moore, passed away today. We are all devastated.” —
The Twitter announcement of Moore’s demise, from his children.

My association with notably polished English actor Roger Moore dates back to
my boyhood. My father was an enthusiastic watcher of the 1962-1969 ITV-TV mystery/spy series The Saint, which starred Moore as Simon Templar, a Robin Hood-like criminal/adventurer developed in a succession of books by Leslie Charteris. In fact, my dad’s purchase in the mid-’60s of a Volvo P1800 was almost certainly inspired on the fact that Templar wheeled about on the small screen in that very same model of sports car (though his was bone white, while my father’s was fire-engine red). Moore appeared as well in another program my father favored: the 1957-1962 ABC Western series Maverick, in which he portrayed Beau Maverick, the cross-Atlantic cousin to a pair of gambling brothers played by James Garner and Jack Kelly. (I eventually caught up with both series in Saturday reruns.)

So when I heard this morning that the London-born, four-times-married Moore had died in Switzerland at age 89, “after a short battle with cancer,” I found myself glancing over at the photograph of my father and brother that sits atop my writing desk. My father succumbed to cancer himself 14 years ago, but if he were still around, I’m sure he would have been as saddened as I was by today’s news.

(Left) Jane Seymour and Roger Moore in the movie Live and Let Die.

Of course, there are many people who don’t associate Roger Moore with Maverick or The Saint, or even with his 1971-1972 UK series, The Persuaders!, in which he and Tony Curtis played globe-trotting, crime-solving millionaire playboys. (You can see the opening from that last series here.) For them, Moore will instead, and always, be the face of randy British superspy James Bond, the role he held onto for 12 years, through seven highly publicized feature films based on Ian Fleming’s espionage fiction. As The Spy Command recalls,

[Moore] was the third film Bond, following Sean Connery and George Lazenby.

During his tenure, from 1973 to 1985, the Bond films took a more lighthearted tone. But his films established, once and for all, the series
could survive—and more—without Connery, the original film 007.

Moore’s first Bond film, 1973’s Live and Let Die [opening title sequence shown here], was an international hit. Its worldwide box office totaled $161.8 million, the first Bond movie to exceed Thunderball’s $141.2 million. The U.S. box office was more modest, $35.4 million. That didn’t match the U.S. take for Connery’s Eon finale, Diamonds Are Forever ($43.8 million).

Regardless, both Eon Productions and its feuding producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman along with studio United Artists were
satisfied. Moore would continue.

Moore would go on to serve as Agent 007 through The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Moonraker (1979), For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy
(1983), and A View to a Kill (1985). He’d be
accompanied in those cinematic outings by a variety of stunning “Bond
Girls,” ranging from Jane Seymour and Britt Eklund to Barbara Bach and Carole Bouquet. “His Bond was more of a charmer than a fighter,” explainsThe Hollywood Reporter, “more of a stirrer than was the shaker embodied by the first Bond, Scotsman Sean Connery. Moore took on the role with a grain of salt, not to mention cigars—as part of his contract, he reportedly was given unlimited Montecristos during production.” Moore was the oldest person to play Fleming’s protagonist on screen, retiring from the part at age 58. “Many [James Bond] fans felt Moore … [had] stayed for one 007 adventure too many …,” remarks The Spy Command. “Fans who never warmed to Moore—and there are some who’ve spent decades decrying the actor—felt vindicated. For those who enjoyed Moore’s
performances, it felt like the end of an era.” (The part of Bond went next to Timothy Dalton, who starred in only two films before being replaced by Pierce Brosnan, in 1995’s GoldenEye.)

Let us not forget, though, that this performer’s big-screen credits extended well beyond the Bond pictures. He co-starred with Lee Marvin in the 1976 East Africa-set war adventure film, Shout at the Devil, was featured alongside Gregory Peck and David Niven in 1980’s The Sea Wolves, and worked on the 1990 British comedy Bullseye! together with Michael Caine and Sally Kirkland. In addition, Moore was cast as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s renowned “consulting detective” in the 1976 TV movie Sherlock Holmes in New York (with Patrick Macnee playing Dr. John H. Watson), and won the part of a novelist turned “hack reporter” in the 1995 mystery teleflick The Man Who Wouldn’t Die.

Moore published two memoirs during his long life—My Word Is My Bond (2009) and Last Man Standing (2014)—and as
The Booksellermentioned earlier today, he had “sent in the manuscript for his last, as-yet-untitled book just two weeks before his death.” There’s no news yet on a release date for that last work.

As The Guardiannotes, in his later years Moore took on the duties of goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, the international humanitarian organization. It adds: “In 1999, Moore was awarded a CBE which then became a knighthood in 2003, given to him for his charity work.”

All of that represented quite a climb from his days on the black-and-white TV series The Saint and Maverick. But Moore seemed to take things in stride. “During my early acting years I was told that to succeed you needed personality, talent, and luck in equal measure,” Moore said to The Guardian back in 2014. “I contest that. For me it’s been 99 percent luck. It’s no good being talented and not being in the right place at the right time.”

We should be grateful to have been around when that right time arrived for Roger George Moore.

Monday, May 22, 2017

Last May 22, I made a big deal of The Rap Sheet’s birthday. But then, that date marked 10 years since this blog was officially launched. Today is, well, The Rap Sheet’s 11th birthday, and as such anniversaries go, anything between 10 and 15 tends to be overlooked. I have nothing profound to say on this occasion.

However, let me share just a few interesting statistics.

We’ve now put up more than 6,800 posts on this page, and have registered almost 4.9 million page views. Something happened over the last year—I don’t know what, maybe just word-of-mouth publicity—which has resulted in The Rap Sheet clocking in far more visitors than it had previously: in excess of 3,500 each day, up from 1,500 to 2,500 visitors a day back in early 2016. Such stats are probably chicken feed when compared with what prominent news sites such as The New York Times or The Washington Post register, or what a publisher-backed, daily updated crime-fiction site such as Criminal Element boasts. But for The Rap Sheet—which is really more a labor of love than a paying proposition—I think they’re pretty outstanding.

Thank you to everyone who reads this blog on a regular, or even irregular, basis. Your interest in the genre and your warm reception of our efforts to cover it keep us going.

Sunday, May 21, 2017

Remember back three weeks ago, when I wrote on this page about my favorite niece and I driving all over the Seattle area on Independent Bookstore Day, trying to visit at least 19 of 23 participating booksellers during a single (very long) Saturday? Well, all of the people who won that “Champion Challenge” were invited this afternoon to stop by Island Books, on Mercer Island (east of downtown Seattle), and pick up their 25-percent discount cards, valid at every one of the 23 stores. Needless to say, my niece and I didn’t pass up this opportunity.

While we were at Island Books, I asked how many people had completed the 2017 challenge. Turns out, there were 340 winners—up from 120 last year, the first time I’d undertaken the race. Now, it's true that there seemed to be more publicity about Independent Bookstore Day this time around than there had been in 2016, the second year of the IBD “Champion Challenge.” But still, 340 winners seems like a huge jump, and may result in the organizers thinking about ways to limit the number of 25-percent discount cards they hand out in 2018.

By the way, I noticed one change in the cards awarded this year. On the back of my 2016 discount card, it said my 25-percent reduction was “valid through Independent Bookstore Day 2017.” The new card, however, proclaims it is “valid until Independent Bookstore Day 2018.” That’s a significant change, because I’ll bet there were plenty of people bearing 2016 cards who employed them on race day last month, deriving one final benefit from their work of the year before. (I know I did.) In 2018, we’ll all have to pay full price for what we buy over the course of the challenge. That might incline some folks to make fewer purchases on what’s become a huge sales day for participating bookshops.

As Robert Lopresti’s Today in Mystery History blog reminds us, actor Raymond Burr—who shifted from villainous movie roles in the 1940s and ’50s to star in the TV series Perry Mason, Ironside, and Kingston: Confidential—was born 100 years ago today in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. In his post, Lopresti recalls the familiar story about how, “in 1956 … Burr applied for the part of prosecutor Hamilton Burger in the TV version of Perry Mason. Erle Stanley Gardner, the creator of the character, supposedly took one look at Burr and shouted ‘That’s Perry Mason!’ The show ran until 1966.”

It seems the town of New Westminster, just southeast of Vancouver, B.C., still trades on its association with Burr, though the actor only lived there for a few years before moving with his family to California. According to the Vancouver Sun, the local Raymond Burr Performing Arts Society, along with the Douglas College Foundation and something called the Burr 100 committee “have established a legacy endowment to provide funding to theatre arts students at [New Westminster’s] Douglas College for generations to come honouring the talent and inspiration of the past with our own local celebrity, Raymond Burr.”

Raymond Burr died from cancer in the fall of 1993 during an extensive NBC-TV movie revival of Perry Mason.

Saturday, May 20, 2017

Thanks to Ali Karim, The Rap Sheet’s fortunate man on the ground in Bristol, England, we have the winners of seven different awards presented earlier this evening during a “gala dinner” at CrimeFest. Judging from reports I’ve heard, one of the program’s highlights was a speech by novelist Ann Cleeves—this year’s Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger award winner—who recalled her lengthy struggle toward success and encouraged other aspiring authors to “stay the course” as well. Here, finally, are tonight’s prize winners:

Also nominated: The Twenty–Three, by Linwood Barclay (Orion); Deep Down Dead, by Steph Broadribb (Orenda); The Wrong Side
of Goodbye, by Michael Connelly (Orion); Blackout, by Ragnar Jónasson (Orenda); Rather Be the Devil, by Ian Rankin (Orion); The
Ashes of London, by Andrew Taylor (HarperFiction); and Cat Among the Herrings,
by L.C. Tyler (Allison & Busby)

The Last Laugh Award (for the best humorous crime novel):Real Tigers, by Mick Herron (John Murray)

Also nominated: PIMP, by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr (Hard Case Crime); I Don’t Like Where This Is Going, by John Dufresne
(Serpent’s Tail); A Cast of Vultures, by Judith Flanders (Allison & Busby); Razor Girl, by Carl Hiaasen (Little, Brown); The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown, by Vaseem Khan (Hodder & Stoughton); Cat Among the Herrings, by L.C. Tyler (Allison & Busby); and Tall Oaks, by Chris Whitaker (Twenty7)

The H.R.F. Keating Award (for the best biographical or critical book related to crime fiction):Brit Noir, by Barry Forshaw (No Exit Press)

Friday, May 19, 2017

Following many hours of panel presentations on this, the second day of the latest CrimeFest (being held through the weekend in Bristol, England), attendees gathered together to hear the announcement of longlisted nominees for several 2017 Dagger awards. The Daggers are presented annually by the British Crime Writers’ Association. Herewith, the rundown of contenders:

CWA Non-fiction Dagger:•A Dangerous Place, by Simon Farquhar (History Press)•Close But No Cigar: A True Story of Prison Life in Castro’s Cuba,
by Stephen Purvis (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)•The Scholl Case: The Deadly End of a Marriage, by Anja
Reich-Osang (Text)•Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes,
by Michael Sims (Bloomsbury)•The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer,
by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury)•A Passing Fury: Searching for Justice at the End of World War II,
by A.T. Williams (Jonathan Cape)•The Ice Age: A Journey into Crystal-Meth Addiction, by Luke
Williams (Scribe)•Another Day in the Death of America, by Gary Younge
(Guardian Faber)

The Daggers are expertly juried awards, so the books and authors making this cut are predictably top-drawer. I don’t customarily inject my opinions into write-ups about such competitions. However, I’m particularly impressed by the lineup of rivals for this year’s Endeavour Historical Dagger. I have read and enjoyed most of the novels longlisted for that honor, but am hoping that the prize ultimately goes to Steven Price’s By Gaslight, which I described in a Rap Sheet post late last year as “an all-consuming adventure with romantic undertones, establishing a new and very high bar against which other historical whodunits will be judged.”

Congratulations to all of the nominees!

We should expect an announcement of the shortlist contenders for all of these commendations, well, shortly. And if past experience is any guide, the winners ought to be broadcast this coming fall.

FOLLOW-UP: There was another prize presented during last night’s CrimeFest merriment. It was announced that Sam Hepburn has won the 2017 CWA Margery Allingham Short Story Competition with her not-yet-published tale, “Box Clever.” Also shortlisted for this honor were Bruce Gaston (“The Case of the Unrepentant Killer”), Ryan Bruce (“Division”), Sam Cunningham (“The Silenced Witness”), and Chris Curran (“The Thought of You”).

Best Critical Non-fiction Work:•Alfred Hitchcock: A Brief Life, by Peter Ackroyd (Nan A. Talese)•Letters from a Serial Killer, by Kristi Belcamino and Stephanie Kahalekulu (CreateSpace)•Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, by Ruth Franklin (Liveright)•Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, by David J. Skal (Liveright)•The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer,
by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury/Penguin)

Nominations for the annual Anthony Awards are made by Bouchercon attendees, who also choose the winners. This is a fan competition, rather than a juried one calling on the expertise of book critics and others. Congratulations are due all of the finalists listed above!

The victors in each category will be announced at the end of a brunch scheduled to be held on October 15, during Bouchercon 2017. A news release says: “While the Sunday Brunch is a ticketed event (buy your tickets through the Registration process), all Bouchercon attendees may attend the short awards ceremony that immediately follows.”

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